The idea behind the stunt was to communicate an exciting point: Children in school today could be the first humans to step foot on Mars. NASA plans to get "boots on the ground" in the next 30 years.

But as former NASA astronaut Tony Antonelli, who's now the chief technologist of exploration systems for Lockheed Martin's civil line of space systems, told Tech Insider, there's not a sense of urgency to get to Mars, and the American people aren't convinced that it will happen.

"You talk to school kids, though, and say, 'Hey are we going to explore Mars?' It's not a tricky question for them. It's an easy question," he said. "They know that humans are going to explore Mars. I feel the pressure that I want to make sure that we've done everything we can to enable that. I also haven't given up. I want to see it happen."